Sombre Dimanche
by Arya May
Summary: He couldn't recall many things that he felt he once had at his fingertips, though they were such shadows at this point that it was hard to distinguish between what was real and what was paranoia... - If Sephiroth had won. S/C. Angst.


_**Sombre Dimanche**_

**A/N: I've been so inactive on the site recently that I felt actually, pretty guilty for not writing more fanfiction when I had the time on my hands. But this idea's been bothering me for a long time: what if Sephiroth had actually won the final battle and became a god after absorbing enough of the Lifestream? I mean, the idea's perfectly plausible, and if you think about the implications, it's honestly downright fact that Seph had just as much chance as Cloud of emerging victorious, if we were to disregard how in canon your character obviously always wins at the end...**

**Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or its characters. I do own my Cloud action figure, wall scroll, and Advent Children T shirt though.  
**

* * *

Time was not an important element here- nor did it matter, with the span of what elapsed a dilapidated melange where seconds bled into minutes and minutes into hours. How many months had passed, Cloud did not know, and neither did he, if the measurements instead stretched themselves into years (_or decades, centuries, eons…_). Counting the days in his mind was an impossibility when the sun never rose, and when the same sun also never set. It had been so long since he had seen the outside that he could only recall a blur of green that constituted Gaia's forests, and of the grey of the walls of a floating city that he remembered was once his home.

He couldn't recall many things that he felt he once had at his fingertips, though they were such shadows at this point that it was hard to distinguish between what was real and what was paranoia. Faces that he forgot the names of sometimes rose out of the glaring white of his rooms to whisper words that he could not hear , words that echoed around the enclosed chambers and lodged themselves at the back of his conscious thought.

Sephiroth (_god_) had told him not to bother himself with trivialities, and though Cloud would not hesitate to obey his orders, he had no control over his involuntary will.

On occasion he would dream of an endless cyan cosmos where fantasy unraveled the world- a cosmos whose depths were composed of passed away souls that unified together in a singular, melancholic dance. There, he saw the light breathe life into the shapeless form that was the Planet's first incarnation during the beginning, and the colour into grey sunrises, the blue into the clarion skies. Sometimes he would find himself in a field of spring flowers, and he would always find a girl trying to reach him with her outstretched hands that he felt he knew at one point (_brown hair, kind green eyes that he could see but never meet-_ ), despite the fact he could never properly come up with when.

(He decided not to tell Sephiroth about these dreams for the fear of displeasing him, but not only that, as sometimes when he saw his god- as beautiful as the first morning star- there would almost be an uneasy clenching in his stomach, as if he were forgetting something- though he never understood _why_.)

But god was fair to him, if nothing else. He would take Cloud up into his arms as he showed the blond the bitterness of his passion, the possessiveness of a something that resembled what Cloud thought was love. It was strange though, because he never thought that love _hurt_ as it did (_the chains that dug into his wrists, the blood on the bed sheets the next morning_) but if his lord willed it, then he would follow to wherever Sephiroth led him.

The dreams got worse as time went along. Whereas before he dreamed of creation, now he only imagined destruction- of the known world, of the moans of the souls as they tried to stop the calamity that crashed from the skies. He dreamed of the Planet purged in flames, of rivers of macabre gore that ran unrestrained on the blood soaked ground as a voice whispered in the back of his head _don't look back, don't look back_. It hurt too much to cast his eyes beyond, almost like as if his mind was a puzzle that only had half of the complete pieces and other gaps naught but gaping voids he felt originally had been filled with something there.

Sephiroth held him as he cried, but never answered his questions. Sometimes as he watched his lord leave him behind, hanging on a fraying thread for the _truth _of all things, Cloud often wondered if he was going insane.

(_For there were so many cracks in what he knew and what he assumed to know, what he remembered and what he thought he had forgotten_…)

Rarely at interval, he peered into those patches between his consciousness and saw nothing but of pain and regret as a long blade made its way through his flesh and a pair of flaring teal eyes narrowed themselves in a contented antiphrasis. He heard himself scream as he witnessed the meteor crash through the dying stars that illuminated crimson bathed space. He saw a village burning down that bordered the mountains- a girl dying in his arms- a man telling him that Cloud was the proof that he was once alive-

Cloud eventually began doubting the reason of his existence- or really, whether or not he was actually _alive _at all. During the days, he struggled under the torments of knowing (_but he couldn't understand- couldn't articulate_) and within his dreams, it was only a further mass of _confusion, pain, horror_-

For he could not remember _why_ or _how_ or even the difference between a lie and honesty, the line between the two words now naught but inexistent shades of blurry shadows as Sephiroth loomed at one end of the turbulence- beckoning him to come back to how it was and the illusion of how things always were, how things always would be under the power of his hands, and they alone.

But that was an impossibility now, with the world so precariously balanced between salvation, or doom beneath in the abyss. He only feared the extent of what his memories had withheld from him, though those things were nothing now, only sombre recollections, a nothing in the face of everything as he slowly learned how to breathe again-

(_in and out, eyes open, like a ghost of the reincarnated_)

And swam deeper and deeper in the seas of his own doubt, fallen from the artificial paradise.

* * *

**Review with feedback, please!**


End file.
